


kotenok

by teenageraccoon



Series: this time-bound conscience [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25211347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenageraccoon/pseuds/teenageraccoon
Summary: There is a cat. This in and of itself is not exceptional because one thing that hasn’t changed over seventy-odd years is the existence of alley cats. He does not know how to take care of a cat but he knows he can not leave it here to bleed and yowl and be upset. He has decided to take care of her and in her own way, she takes care of him.
Series: this time-bound conscience [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1517654
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	kotenok

He has stayed in the subway station for seven days. He knows this because he entered it on the ninth of September and the newspaper he took yesterday was dated the sixteenth of September. Today is the eighth day he has stayed in the subway station and he needs to find sustenance because he has not ingested any since the fifth day he stayed in the station.

The station is Myrtle Ave, according to the tiling on the wall. It feels like something he might remember, someday, like there’s a memory that is still out of touch but one he knows exists nonetheless.

Trains come through the station often but he has not been seen. The station is not warm but it is not cold, either, and it is dry in most places, and there is no one for him to hurt in the station. There are few lights on in the station but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore because he can still see, perhaps not as clearly as if there were many lights, but without a significant struggle.

He has gotten three newspapers for each of the three days he has left the station since entering it. He hasn’t read much aside from the date. The newspapers frustrate him because he has to go somewhere specific to get them now that there aren’t newsboys and the price printed on the top seems far higher than it should be. It’s more money than he has, so he steals them from the racks at different bodegas. The English is confusing and gives him a headache when he tries to read it. He could probably get a newspaper in Russian because he knows Russian better than English, but he doesn’t know where to find one, and he would have to talk to a person to find out, and talking to people is out of the question.

He forms a mission for the day. There is hair on his face and he wants it gone. His stomach is empty and he needs to eat. He will steal a razor and shaving cream from a bodega because there is a security guard who might notice him at the Duane Reade, and then he will go to the public library and shave. After that, he will hop the subway until he reaches a bodega he hasn’t been to before and he will steal a protein bar and a bag of peanuts and a loaf of bread and a water bottle. Then he will find a copy of the day’s newspaper and sneak back into the subway station that proclaims itself to be Myrtle Ave.

It is not a hard mission. It is nearly impossible for him to task himself with a hard mission. It has been a hard mission to return to Rogers, one he has not yet completed but has not yet failed, and there is no other mission he has given himself that has proven unsuccessful. The hardest part will be stealing the food, but it will not be hard to distract the cashier for as long as it takes for him to slip out the back door.

He exits the subway station and makes sure there is no track of him having been there, then sits in a shadowed alley next to a dumpster for a little while, adjusting to being above ground. He shoves his left hand deep in the pocket of his sweatshirt so it remains unnoticeable and begins to walk. At the first bodega he enters, he steals a disposable razor and a travel sized can of shaving cream from a very sparse personal hygiene aisle. The cashier is playing a game on his cell phone. When he approaches, the cashier puts his cell phone down and asks, “Did you find everything you needed?” and he shakes his head and leaves the store before the cashier says anything back.

The Clinton Hill Library branch is closest to his first bodega, so that’s where he goes next. He locks the door of the single-stall restroom behind him and covers his lower face in the shaving cream. He does the best he can to shave off all of his facial hair. The razor is shitty. It leaves him with nicks and uneven patches and probably razor burn, but he washes the shaving cream off and washes the razor off and puts them both in the right-hand pocket of his sweatshirt.

His skin feels cleaner. It feels good. He does not feel emotions, but he thinks that if he did, he would be happy that he shaved. Now he doesn’t have to pull it out.

The library is taxing, though, and he finds himself in another alley to calm down and collect himself. He picks up the few coins he finds on the ground next to him and puts them in his pocket.

They won’t be enough to buy anything with, but if he continues to find them, it will start to add up. He can’t buy things for a nickel anymore, which he often forgets; if there’d been the chance of any finances being involved in one of his missions, HYDRA had handled it, and they’d wipe him after the significant missions, so he doesn’t remember using money before 1943.

Vaguely, he wonders what happened to his Army wages, whose hands that money ended up in. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t think he cares. Eventually—he doesn’t know how long it takes—he picks himself up off of the ground. He brushes the bits of gravel off of his pants. He stretches his limbs and works his left arm a few times and leaves the alley again. It is near lunchtime, which means there are more people around.

Since the Triskelion, there have been a few things he has learned. He has learned that he used to be called Bucky and he has learned that money does not work the way it used to and he has learned that he does not like to have facial hair and he has learned that he fucking _hates_ people. He has learned that being around people brings nothing good. If he’s above ground for too long, every person turns into a target, a threat, something to be avoided at all costs. He does not like people.

(According to the Smithsonian, he might like Rogers. He should like Rogers, except now he’s shot Rogers multiple times and Rogers will hate him as much as he hates other people. Some days, he trails Rogers despite, or maybe in favor of, this fact.)

He’s used to navigating the subway tunnels at this point. This is how he gets himself to Queens and exits through Seneca Station. He’s walking in aimless search of another store when he hears it.

There is a cat. This in and of itself is not exceptional because one thing that hasn’t changed over seventy-odd years is the existence of alley cats. However, the cat is yowling. It sounds unhappy and pained and the noise makes his stomach twist in a way he hasn’t experienced since he was in DC.

The cat is in the back of the second alley he checks, laying on its side with one paw extended. Its fur is pure white but stained a reddish-brown with dried blood, and it is still bleeding from its extended front paw.

He does not know how to take care of a cat but he knows he can not leave it here to bleed and yowl and be upset. He crouches down and approaches it slowly. It is watching him and does not seem wary about him approaching.

“Hello, cat,” he tries to say in Russian. No sound comes out. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s spoken. The cat yowls. He sits down next to it. “Hello, cat,” he tries again. His throat burns and his voice is raspy but he succeeds at saying the words. It does not matter that they are in Russian because he is only talking to an alley cat. “What did you do,” he says.

The cat yowls. He reaches forward so that he can touch the cat. The cat sniffs his fingers and then rubs the top of its head against his palm. He picks up the cat under its stomach and positions it in his lap and hunches over to look at its wounded paw. The cat is a girl.

There is a shard of thick green glass directly in the pad of her foot and the surrounding fur is matted badly with blood. He sees a broken beer bottle and a Heineken label not far away from where he and the cat are sitting.

He feels the first clear emotions he’s had since the Smithsonian. He feels anger towards whoever smashed their bottle in an alley and left it there for a cat to get hurt on. He feels bad for the cat that got hurt. He doesn’t know what emotion ‘bad’ is.

“Okay, cat,” he says. He pets her head once with his hand and she meows, sounding less pained. The cat sounding less pained is a good thing. “Here.” He lifts her paw carefully but the cat pulls it away and then meows when the motion hurts. “Don’t be stubborn. I’m trying to help you.” He doesn’t know why he’s still talking to the cat when she won’t understand and it hurts him, but he doesn’t stop. “You have glass in your foot.”

The cat goes back to yowling.

He sighs and stands up, trying not to jostle the cat too much. She doesn’t protest. He cradles her to his chest, exits the alley, and continues walking. There is a dollar store on the next block and a buzzer sounds when he opens the door. It makes him jump. The cat meows.

“Shush,” he says. The cat shushes.

He goes to the beauty aisle first. He takes tweezers from the shelf and bends down as if he’s adjusting the shoelace on his boots, then slips the tweezers inside his boot next to his leg. He also takes two extra large t-shirts and discreetly notices the CCTV camera, then slips one of the shirts inside his jacket and places the other one back on the shelf.

This cashier does not say anything to him when he leaves.

He sits down on the curb a few blocks away, in a spot that is well lit and devoid of people. The cat squirms out of his hold and yowls again when she hits the sidewalk, like she forgot about the glass in her paw.

“Come back here, stupid,” he says. She ignores him but allows herself to be picked up again. He takes the tweezers and tears the package open with his teeth and then takes the t-shirt and rips off a long strip of fabric. He pets her for a little while, hoping it will calm her down before he has to remove the glass. She starts to purr, a rumble in her chest that seems like it’s way too big a noise for the size of cat she is.

“Okay, cat,” he says. He takes her paw carefully, holding it only tightly enough so she can’t yank it back, and then takes the tweezers. The glass comes out easily. It’s a long shard that causes the wound to start bleeding freely again. He kicks the shard of glass into a gutter and wraps the cat’s foot in the t-shirt fabric to stop the bleeding.

She yells her little head off the entire time.

He understands, because having glass extracted from skin is painful. At least he did not have to cut the cat’s paw open to take it out because the wound had closed over the glass.

“Good job,” he says to the cat, and starts to pet her on the head again. She is still meowing like she’s in pain and blood is seeping into the makeshift bandage, but the cat will be okay. He knows how to take care of injuries.

His self-given mission is still incomplete, but he can’t leave the cat here. He picks her up again and makes his way back to the subway station he came out of and this time he hops a train back to Brooklyn and exits at the active Myrtle Station before entering into his own.

He places the cat carefully next to the wall of the platform, far away from the tracks. He sits down next to her and pets her head idly with his right hand and reevaluates his mission.

He needs to get himself food. He also needs to get the cat food, because he is going to take care of the cat until her paw is better and he can not do that if he lets the cat starve to death. He also needs to get something with which to clean the blood from her fur. He can complete this new mission at a bodega like he does with the rest of his missions.

He does not want to leave the cat and he himself will need to sleep soon in order to maintain operational adequacy, so he sets her on his stack of newspapers and lays down next to her and closes his eyes.

He is not fully asleep nor fully awake. The cat purrs for a little while and then goes silent when she falls asleep. When he finally brings himself to full consciousness, the cat is still sleeping, so he decides to wait before he leaves. He doubts the cat will be able to put any weight on her paw, but the cat has already proven herself to be stubborn, and he doesn’t want to leave the station without her. He didn’t pull glass out of her foot just for her to get killed by a train.

There’s no gauge of time in the station, so he doesn’t know how long it takes for the cat to wake up until they leave. It’s still light out.

This time, he goes to the nearest bodega. He has a twenty dollar bill in his pocket that he stole from a tourist a few weeks back. He plans to spend it.

He forces his brain to work in English and approaches the register. He tries not to look excessively threatening. He thinks he probably fails.

He points to the cat, who is nestled inside his jacket, and says, “food?”

“Cat food?” the cashier clarifies. “Aisle four, bottom shelf on the left.” He nods a thank you and goes to find it. He doesn’t know which of the many options to get and ends up taking multiple cans of the cheapest one. Next, he gets baby wipes to clean the blood off of her fur. For himself, he takes a protein bar and a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. He gets a newspaper at the register.

His total is $16.88. He hands over the twenty and pretends his hand does not shake violently. He takes the bag with his items and exits the store.

He changes the cat’s bandage in the subway station. Her paw has stopped bleeding. He cleans her fur using the baby wipes and then pets her for a little while before he opens one of the cat food tins.

She eats it like she hasn’t eaten in days. Maybe she hasn’t. Maybe he and the cat are not all that different.

He waits until she finishes eating, then opens the bread for himself. He eats two slices before he feels nauseous. The cat whines and paws at him with her good foot until he gives her a little bit of the crust.

He moves the cat back onto the makeshift newspaper bed and sits down next to her. Eventually they both fall asleep, and when he wakes up shaking and drenched in sweat, the cat is still there.

Over the following days, there are some things he learns about the cat. The first thing he learns is that she always wants food. No matter how long it has been since he has opened a tin of food for her, she always wants another. She is smaller than him and a cat, so she eats more often than him. This means he must either purchase or steal food for the cat. He does this so the cat does not starve and die. He has decided to take care of her and he would not have taken good care of her if she died.

The second thing he learns about the cat is she likes to make noise. Sometimes, the noise she makes is an insistent meowing. This noise is made most often when she wants food. Sometimes, the noise she makes is purring. This noise is made when he pets her for a very long time, or when she is falling asleep. Sometimes, the noise she makes is hissing. This noise is made when she sees a rat scurrying, and is the precursor to her pouncing and killing the rat. He has nothing to do with dead rats, so he throws them onto the tracks.

The third thing he learns about the cat is that she does not like to be very far away from him. He brings her with him when he exits the station and makes her sit in his sweatshirt, resting on his arm which is bent to support her. This allows her to poke her head out of the collar of his sweatshirt. When they are in the station, she likes to lay on his lap, or perch on his shoulder. She will meow insistently when she wants to do either of these until she is allowed to. He teaches her that him patting his chest means she should jump and let herself be caught so she can climb onto his shoulder while he is standing. When he walks, she weaves between his ankles. Sometimes she will meow to be picked up even when he is walking. She does not sleep on the bed made of newspaper anymore; instead, she sleeps on top of him. He can feel her purr while she falls asleep.

The most important thing he learns is that she is a very good cat. He tells her that she is a good cat often, and this is pointless because she is a cat and does not speak Russian, but he feels like it is important that he tells her. If– when– he returns to Rogers, he is not going to leave her behind. She is his cat and owning a cat is different than owning a human and he takes care of her and she takes care of him, because she will groom his stubble when he hasn’t shaved and butt her head against his hand when he is visibly agitated.

Rogers asks if his cat has a name. She does not, and Rogers makes a strange expression when he states this. He decides on a name for Rogers to call her. He does not call her this but that is okay. She is just a cat and does not know, and he loves her anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel obligated to put this disclaimer: it totally is possible to navigate new york via its subway tracks but is ill advised unless you want to get electrocuted with a misstep and/or hit by a train. the [myrtle ave station](http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/myrtle.html) mentioned was indeed in operation from 1915 to 1956 so it's feasible that bucky could've remembered it and the area, this is different from the myrtle ave station that is currently in operation. myrtle ave and seneca are miles apart but i'm claiming creative liberty due to bucky being superhuman.  
> as usual, you can find me on tumblr [here](http://teenageraccoon.tumblr.com).


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